Tether USD
Overview
USDT dominates offshore trading volume and emerging-market remittance flows, but neither Visa nor Mastercard lists it for settlement. The contrast is instructive: settlement eligibility is driven by reserve quality and regulatory posture, not by market cap or liquidity.
If you handle inbound crypto payments you will still encounter USDT constantly — hence its inclusion in this reference — but treat it as a customer-side asset, not a network-settlement asset.
Card-network settlement support
The largest stablecoin by float, but on neither Visa’s nor Mastercard’s published settlement lists, which hold only coins from issuers regulated in the US, the EU or Singapore. Included here for completeness.
Regulation & reserves
Mixed reserves (US Treasuries plus other assets incl. secured loans and bitcoin); quarterly attestations, no full audit.
Chain deployments
| Chain | Standard | Final after | Contract / asset identifier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | ERC-20 | ≈ 13–19 min | 0xdAC17F958D2ee523a2206206994597C13D831ec7 |
| Tron | TRC-20 | ≈ 1 min | TR7NHqjeKQxGTCi8q8ZY4pL8otSzgjLj6t |
Always verify contract addresses against the issuer’s official documentation before use — lookalike tokens with identical symbols are a common scam vector.